Page:Edinburgh Review Volume 158.djvu/345

330 Senate of Nuremberg. It was too late. The 'excellent doorkeeper' of the Copernican mansion, belaboured so vigorously by Giordano Bruno, had his way. Only on conditions arbitrarily imposed by him could access be had to its fair and spacious halls. If, however, we are bound to find him guilty of a misdemeanour, we must, in strict justice, acquit him of a felony. He committtedcommitted [sic] no forgery. His remarks did not professedly come from the pen of Copernicus; it might even be gathered by implication that they owned a different origin from the Epistle to the Pope, the bold and manly simplicity of which contrasted so strikingly with their tone of deprecatory cunning. But few indeed were the readers who detected the anomaly. In spite of the warnings of Bruno, Kepler, and Gassendi, the fraudulent 'præfatiuncula,' reprinted in every edition of 'De Revolutionibus,' passed, down almost to our own times, and amongst well-informed writers, as faithfully representative of Copernican sentiments.

The scope of the reform effected by the great man whose life we have thus briefly attempted to trace was twofold; it was to show, first, that the vicissitudes of day and night are produced, not by a revolution from east to west of the celestial sphere once in twenty-four hours, but by a rotation from west to east of the earth on its own axis in the same period; secondly, that the annual changes of the seasons result from a circulation of the earth round the sun, instead of, as had previously been supposed, of the sun round the earth, in a period of 365¼ days. Thus was our steadfast terrestrial habitation lifted from its immemorial foundations, and, degraded to the level of a mere planet, hurled, spinning, into the void of space; while the glorious luminary of day was placed in the seat of honour which his insignificant satellite had so long usurped, on a golden throne in the centre of the universe. An instinct of congruity and truth told Copernicus that so it was fitting that it should be; and this instinct was the vivifying spark of his intellectual life. The harmonious orderliness of his nature revolted from the idea that the visibly pre-eminent body which was the source of life and light to the world, should be compelled to play a subordinate part, and abdicate the 'sole dominion' rightfully belonging to it, in order to move obediently amidst the 'various rounds' of the planets. And he cherished with unshaken confidence the belief that the pattern of creation which seemed good to him had also, in the beginning, seemed good to the Creator. His scheme might, then, be accurately described as a remodelling of the received astronomy on the basis of symmetry and simplicity.